Professional SQL Server 2000 XML

I looked at two other SQL Server 2000 XML books, but found this one to be the best - covering almost everything on SQL Server 2000 XML. Very well written, nice examples help understand the technology better. The chapter on Updategrams is very useful. I wanted to learn updategrams and this chapter covers it nicely to get started using them in production.

Wrox has always prided themselves on code intensive books, and this is no exception. Unfortunately, they are also getting a bit intensive in the area of adding authors to be the first one to market. This leads to a book that seems a bit disjointed. With as few chapters as this book has, I do not see the need for so many authors. I guess it is the length.Pluses in this book include the chapter on FOR XML and the chapter on OPENXML. I believe this is the area where most developers will like to spend the most of their time. I would have liked to see FOR XML EXPLICIT get a bit more coverage, as this is the bear, but the examples are workable, so I cannot complain too much.I also enjoyed the updategram chapter. This ability was highly touted in Microsoft marketing events, but took quite some time to surface. The case studies help put the technology in a real world light.The negatives are few. First, I believe far too much time is spent on XSD schemas, at least with the way it is presented. In a real world scenario, you are probably going to pull the schema from an existing database, which makes this material NULL and void. If you do get into writing XSD, you will find this material far too shallow.I also would have liked to see how this technology could blend with the direction Microsoft is pushing .NET. I realize this is not the topic of the book, so I have not hammered on this. Perhaps the next book will be SQL Server 2000 and .NET?